1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to photonic integrated circuit (PIC) chips and more particularly to thermal isolation and heat dissipation of integrated optical components formed in a PIC chip or in a wafer comprising PIC chip die.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a photonic integrated circuit (PIC), many active and passive optical components are integrated on the same semiconductor substrate. Some active photonic devices or components require large amounts of input power and, as a result, generate a substantial amount of heat in the chip. For example, arrays of laser diodes (LDs), electro-optic modulators and/or semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) on a single PIC chip may require large amounts of drive current and/or bias. If many of these optical components are to coexist monolithically on the same semiconductor support or substrate, it is important to insure that they are sufficiently thermally isolated or that heat generated by them can be efficiently dissipated away from adjoining components and off the PIC chip.
There are a number of methods that can be employed for thermal isolation in photonic devices or components integrated in PIC chips. Components are often separated physically, and the host wafer is often thinned. Typically, the rule of thumb is that, if the separation between optical components in the chip is much less than the thickness of the wafer, then the on-chip integrated optical or photonic components will need to be thermally isolated from one another.
Another method that is employed relates to the use of flip chip techniques for placement of chips onto a heatsink. If the heatsink has a higher thermal conductivity than the semiconductor substrate, the heat sink will serve to thermally isolate optical chip components that are adjacent to each other.
Both of these techniques have some problems. PIC devices are typically made on compound semiconductor wafers, e.g., fabricated on InP wafers, which are much more fragile than silicon wafers. As a result, although thinning a wafer helps with thermal isolation, it also results in increased wafer breakage and lowers chip yields. Flip-chip is often used for small photonic devices. For larger devices, the difference in the thermal expansion coefficient, the solder and the heat sink results in excess stress which, in turn, results in poor reliability. For a large photonic integrated circuit, flip chip is rendered impractical by the size of the optical components and the resultant PIC chip.
For high speed electronic circuits, holes or vias are often used to transfer the ground plane at the bottom of the semiconductor to the top surface. A via is created by etching a hole through the semiconductor and then filling the hole with metal, typically by means of electroplating.